【1988 Archives】

That's one big plane.

988 ArchivesStratolaunch, the world's largest aircraft that just so happens to be designed to "enable airline-style access to space," successfully took flight for the first time in the Mojave Desert on April 13. The plane is the brainchild of Paul G. Allen's Stratolaunch Systems Corporation, and sports an impressive 385-foot wingspan.

That's not all that makes this plane remarkable. According to the company, the Stratolaunch has a max takeoff weight of 589,670 kilograms and will one day assist in the launching of rockets — and satellites — into space.

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"We all know Paul would have been proud to witness today’s historic achievement," Jody Allen, the trustee of the Paul G. Allen Trust, is quoted as saying in a press release announcing the launch. "The aircraft is a remarkable engineering achievement and we congratulate everyone involved."

Paul Allen co-founded Microsoft with Bill Gates in 1975. He died late in 2018 as a result of complications from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

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Importantly, Saturday's flight was just a test — no rockets were launched from the giant plane as it soared at 17,000 feet. Instead, notes the press release, the pilot "[performed] a variety of flight control maneuvers to calibrate speed and test flight control systems, including roll doublets, yawing maneuvers, pushovers and pull-ups, and steady heading side slips."

Still though, if the Stratolaunch ends up working as intended, this test marks a big step in the journey toward reducing the cost of putting satellites into space. Which, frankly, makes this freakishly large plane all the cooler.